The Real Deal

Okay, so it's very annoying that I have to bend my neck every time I pass through a door, and that my bathroom mirror comes up to my chest if I stand normally. But honestly speaking, the practical inconveniences of Japan end right about there. In almost everything related to daily life, Japan is extremely convenient for anyone living here: public transport, public safety, supply of consumer goods (from apartments to second-hand clothes to electronics to books to 24/7 food), the cellphone system, etc.

Despite these luxuries, I am quite sure I won't live my whole life here. Of course my desire to see as many different corners of the world as possible is a major factor in that feeling. But there are other issues. And today, they seem quite heavy. So heavy, in fact, that it seems impossible to overcome them without sacrificing some things that lie quite close to the core of my being. On the other hand, I love a good challenge, and there will be goods and bads wherever you set foot in the world. Japan might not be that bad. For now, I'll leave things as they are and keep on living my life - a strategy which has proven itself often in times of philosophical impasse or other complicated situations. Personal conclusions and related important decisions are still a while away, and we will discuss the issues at hand many, many times before that, I'm sure.

So which issues, you ask? Here you go.

The above website gives a very good layout of what culture shock is like for most Western foreigners coming to Japan. In my first year in Japan (I had several parties this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary, by the way! You can look forward to the next blog entry), I've had to deal with many, but not all, of the issues the author describes, and it was a refreshing read for me; reminded me of where I'm standing right now. Though I doubt anyone can understand those issues without being in Japan for a long time, hopefully it'll help you to bring your (probably way-off) image of Japan a bit closer to reality. Hopefully it'll turn you on, rather than off, and stimulate your curiosity. Hopefully it'll motivate you to shake loose of the usual confinements of your world and stride into the wild universe out there.

To stimulate your curiosity even further, let me give you a teaser of what's to come on this blog. Just the other day, I mentioned I should start making a list of the small cultural differences between Japan and Holland so I can show it to people whenever they ask that dreaded question. Well, here it is! A beginning of the list of things that are strikingly different in Japan than in Holland (I keep using that country because I don't want to generalize to 'the Western world', though in many cases it might be just as appropriate...if I speak about languages the contrast is usually between Japanese and English, not Dutch). Compared to the being-'of-the-same-age'-if-you're-equally-old-on-April-1 quirk, the following things are kind of deep...but here goes!

• The meaning of love
• The rhythm and melody of language
• Music
• The concept of normality, or of absurdity
• The concept of quality
• Rationality
• Justice and its value
• Interpersonal relationships
  
• Sarcasm

Dear blog, dear readers: we have a lot to talk about.

Respect Your Elders My Ass

It's probably a universal feature of humans that (they think that) young people aren't showing enough respect for their elders. In Holland, I think it's quite true - living in Amsterdam, I honestly didn't have the idea that young people went out of their way to help elders, let alone respect them for no other reason than their age. Wow, I remember how my friend Loek could go on for hours about the uselessness of 'respect' - an extreme example of what I experienced to be the Dutch way of doing things.

In Japan, things are different. Historically, respect for the elders has been heavily ingrained in Japanese culture (perhaps it always has been more so here than in Europe). Of course, the usual keigo is applied when speaking to people who are older than you, and this I am gradually learning to accept (fortunately it's not so difficult to make people stop using it when talking to me). However, recently one source of frustration has been the excessive passiveness of younger people when in the company of older people. Overgeneralizing so you get the idea, older people are expected to make all the decisions and younger people don't talk unless talked to. Today I had a date with a girl from another band, it didn't go spectacularly, and I met up with U-ta and Yuuki afterwards. They forced me to accept, at least provisionally, the reason why many times conversation (and thus interaction, relationship, everything...verbal communication is essential to human interaction, am I wrong?) with Japanese doesn't flow well: I'm older than my conversation partners.

This is respect for your elders taken too far. I am obviously biased, coming from an unJapanese background; through these experiences, I realized that free conversation is one thing in this world I am extremely attached to and truly need in order to make my life meaningful. When anyone younger than you refuses to speak to you for no other reason than your age, and you are expected to do the same to your elders, there is no one left for you to have meaningful interaction (please give me alternative definitions for that term if you can) with than people of the same age. A dull world indeed, and again one piece of the Japanese puzzle falls into place, making it easier to see why many other Japanese quirks are as they are.

An example from personal experience: the people I'll be playing with tomorrow in Osaka. As the drummer (same age) and electric guitarist (2 years younger) were walking me back to the station yesterday, the drummer said the following:

"Wow, it's really a relief that we're the same age [he'd found out about half an hour before]! Makes the talking so much easier!"

...and I, in my head, was like "WTF are you talking about!? Who gives a shit?". I honestly feel bad knowing that if I were one year his superior, that would have a major, negative impact on our creative interaction in the studio as well as ordinary conversation. In fact, the tone of the vast majority of conversations with people you newly meet in Japan is instantly, conveniently, set by the answer to the question "How old are you?".

If it were up to me, 'experience' should be more of a respect-determinant than 'age', though I am dying to continue the old respect conversation with Loek and see if we can work out exactly how respect is ever useful (oh noes, did you just realize with me that that 'useful' is a completely relative concept? All my theorizing gone to waste...?). Of course, the two (age and experience) are linked, and in Japan they are very linked, which explains the situation. Maybe even more so than in the U.S. (from what I know), the percentage of Japanese lives that are completely stereotypical seems to be very high. School, uni, job, marriage, children, death, and all the extracurricular/'personal' activities along the way. Even a certain amount of 'craziness' is expected from anyone and included in the system of norms & values. I won't even try to compare Dutch and Japanese notions of 'craziness'; let's just say they're different, which somehow makes it so that when foreigners interact with Japanese, usually at least one party thinks the other is crazy. In a good way! It's why we are able to get along..it's interesting.

Wow, I can't help but feel I'm overrationalizing. What do you think? Anyway, let me conclude on a positive note (you know me by now). People who are older than you, if they're in the least cool, won't mind you (or me at least) dropping the keigo and speaking on the same level. I haven't been here for long enough yet to judge, but it seems that from there, good relationships follow naturally (as they would in Holland, where everyone thinks keigo is insane).

With it gradually becoming clearer that it will be very hard to 'integrate' psychologically into Japanese society, I am excited to see, within the next five years or so, how flexible my mind really is. Until now I've been proceeding smoothly, making good use of what I considered perhaps to be the one single thing I was really good at, but it seems I'm getting caught up in the rapids. Go with the flow - let's stretch to breaking point! Or beyond! Oooh, that sounds even more exciting .. another new world to explore .. I wonder what's hiding there...

P.S. A snippet of trivia: In Japan, almost everything begins in April (cherry blossoms, school, university, work, maybe even the fiscal year). It is not completely unexpected, then, that whether or not you're 'the same age' as someone else is determined by whether or not you're the same age on April 1, not on January 1 (aka same year of birth), as in every other country I've been to. Another one of those Japanese quirks that make Japanese culture completely different from Dutch. I should seriously start making a list of these subtleties to show to people whenever they ask me "so how is Japanese culture different from Dutch?", a question I invariably answer with "they are completely opposite" because it's so complicated I can't give a real answer.

P.P.S. If you have time, check out a movie called Ima, Ai Ni Yukimasu and tell me what you think. I have a very strong opinion about this film and just by talking about it to U-ta and Yuuki for ten minutes it seems we have stumbled upon another deep difference between Japanese and Dutch ways of thinking. But after reading some other people's opinions of the movie online, I realized that maybe it's not a Japanese-Dutch contradiction, but more one between a typical Japanese and me. I'm curious to find out the truth.

Fireworks, Funky Friends and that Fine Family Feeling: It's A Free-Fall Free-For-All Fantastic Fork !

Warning: Long.

Last evening, when I was walking to the local udon shop with Evans in the still-barely-bearable Kyoto heat, I told him how my entire stay in Japan up until now seems like one big vacation. Though my recent experience with the entrance exam reminded me that it's about time I started getting more serious focused, particularly with my physics efforts, it's hard to imagine a complete loss of this feeling of freedom and the wonder at being here. Still, I do think I'll sober up once I lose touch with most of my international friends and start hanging out in the lab for 8 hours a day. In any case, this is the middle of summer vacation, and whatever the future holds, right now it's that good old SUMMER FEELING!

I'll discuss the major activities of the past two weeks in chronological order.

On last week's Friday, there was the annual fireworks display at Lake Biwa. Though I had originally planned to go with the Ego people, I ended up going by myself and meeting up with Jesus, June and Jaa, as well as some of their friends and their friends. It was beautiful evening; Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake of Japan, and it was my first time to go there. The fireworks are launched from the water close to the shore of the southwestern part of the lake, which is closest to Kyoto; it's not far at all from the city. That part of the lake is surrounded by a 20-meter-wide strip of low vegetation and pedestrian boulevard, so the visibility is very good from a very large area on land. This makes it relatively easy to accomodate the 350,000 people that flock in, and provides for a very relaxed atmosphere with the insanity of Tenjin Matsuri and Gion Matsuri (see my respective posts here and here) being replaced by a quiet, giant picnic next to the water.

The fireworks were amazing, and the spirit of community that was all around us was very pleasant. On walking back to the station with my friends around 10, I stumbled upon Ikeyan and Nonchan, dancing in the street to the music of some girls and guys playing a bunch of rare instruments such as a jew's harp, metal thumb piano, all kinds of percussion, and a wonderful instrument I'd never seen before, called a hang (see this video for a somewhat monotonous example of play). It took me about .5 seconds to lose interest in my station-headed friends, and what ensued was a wonderful music and dance session in the streets of Ootsu. I got the contact info of the main music guy, and he was very excited to help me out with some sonic sweetness for my home-based music projects. By the way, the funky band I met at the riverside last week invited me to jam with them next Thursday, so I'm also looking forward to that. As far as music is concerned, things are going the right way.








The next day, I went to Kobe with Ikeyan, Nonchan and Misa. There's an annual event in one of the many clubs on one of the beaches around Kobe, and a bunch of Ikeyan's DJ/dancer friends from Osaka were to come as well. It turned out to be a really fun day, consisting mainly of bouncing back and forth between the dancefloor to the sea. Saw some really entertaining dance/music shows by all kinds of people - I've come to realize the Kyoto scene is really quite limited -, danced a lot, and felt intense satisfaction at being in the sea again (the previous time was before I came to Japan, on the Moz/SA trip). After getting back to Kyoto, Ikeyan joined Misa and me for nightly food and drinks in one of the cozy places close to both of their places, and the day was finished off in a relaxed, happy fashion. Also got an update regarding the status of weed among the youth in Japan - though it's not unpopular, it's quite a hassle, and in any case waaaay expensive (40 euro/g or so). We're all excited to go to Thailand's Full Moon Party and alter our minds there next year.







Sunday, then. Spent the day at Misa's place (watched Trainspotting for the first time - very cool) to take an evening train to Uji, where there was to be the annual Uji fireworks session. I underestimated the traffic and ended up in the fullest train I've been in in Japan so far (which is not the fullest ever yet for me, though I think the record might be mercilessly claimed by Tokyo next month), and once I exited the Uji station, the show was just about to begin. I managed to squeeze myself to a pleasant standing spot on a bridge 100 metres from the entrance to the station, and watched the show (which was less amazing than the one at Lake Biwa) by myself. When it was over, I met up with Tareq and Evans, who were around there as well, and spent the rest of the evening chilling with them.

Monday, I went to Nara with Tareq, Jesus and June, and we met up with Hibino, our assistant tutor of the past semester, who is from Nara, and he toured us around. I'll let the pics speak for themselves, just noting that this particular day was the lucky once-a-year that a large part of Nara is lit up by candles at night.
















On Tuesday, Koki arrived with a friend of his from Tokyo (who turned out to be a really funny guy - maybe the first person I have been able to practice my absurd humor with since I parted ways with Borgir). They were passing through on the way to their hometown Fukuoka, and had about 24 hours for Kyoto and Osaka. Meeting up (finally!!!) at Kyoto Station, the first thing they wanted to do was go to a public bath, because they'd been clubbing-not-sleeping for a couple of days. I hadn't been to one before, but there turned out to be one smack in the middle of central Kyoto, in a small alley somewhere inside a shopping district. It was a very pleasant first experience; hot and cold baths, a hottt sauna and a bath whose walls sent pulses of electricity through it every second, which I didn't find pleasant enough to enter with more than one leg. From this experience and the next, I gather that Japanese people spend about 20-30 minutes in such a bath, and come out very clean and very refreshed. It's great. I also witnessed a yakuza subordinate thoroughly scrubbing, washing and drying his aged boss's naked body, which was interesting.

Once we got out of the bath, Koki wanted to go to a temple or shrine, so we went to Fushimi Inari, where I'd been once before (the one with the thousand red gates - see this post of mine), walked around for a couple of hours, and took a train to my place, where they crashed out while I grabbed a ton of music and dance videos from Koki's hard drive. When they woke up, we headed to Osaka and met up with Kentaro, a locally well-known dancer who Koki knew, and who ended up being the dude I met at Eszteca's studio some 6 months ago - a nice coincidence. From the practice spot in front of Namba station through the showcase-packed club night, I got my first impression of the Osaka dance scene, and it's basically bigger and more exciting than in Kyoto, though Kyoto's relaxed vibe is certainly very pleasant as well. Unfortunately, DJ time was somewhat crap and the club very full, so there wasn't too much dancing on our side - in any case, not enough for to permit me to ask Kentaro for his number so we could practice together in Osaka sometime in the future, which he'd suggested in the beginning of the evening. I'll get there eventually. Anyway, after Koki and his friend took a shower in a manga/internet cafe close to the station, we went our separate ways around 6 am, and I headed straight for Sanjo, Kyoto, where I would meet Ryu (my tutor of the first semester), his friend/assistant tutor, Tareq and Evans, to depart for our two-day long "camp" trip.




This trip was something Ryu had invited us to a month or two ago, but until the day we left we didn't really have much of an idea of what it would be like. It turned out to most resemble the family gatherings I sometimes have with my extended family in Germany: people of 3 or 4 generations gathering in a comfortable house or two in the middle of nature, playing games all day and drinking and chatting the night away. In this case, the group we joined consisted of some three families, each spanning three generations, who have anually meet in this particular place (some 2-3 hours drive from Kyoto). In line with the strong contrast between insiders and outsiders, we were immediately accepted as insiders (since Ryu and Hibino, who have been doing this camp thing for a couple of years now), which meant that we really became a part of the family.

Spending two days and two nights with those people was incredibly fun. Among the three families' three generations were a ton of interesting, funny, crazy and friendly people. The program consisted of a lot of chatting (a lot of interesting stories about Jordan, Kenya and Japan), a lot of sports (outdoor baseball and soccer, indoor basketball, volleyball, badminton, tabletennis), games (cards, bingo with prizes for everyone), outdoor grilling, bathing together, lots of food and lots of drink. From what is probably the richest Japanese person I have gotten to know so far - a lady working in Tokyo who works at the top level of Toyota's hybrid program - to the grandpa who's funny as hell, knows how to hold his liquor and is extremely sporty, to the bikers and the cute small kids, a pretty lady who just returned from living in the Dominican Republic for two years, a Big Friendly Giant who's ghost-story-telling skills entertained the kids to no end (understanding them was a little tough for me, but it was a fun challenge, and I promised that next year I'll be able to tell my own stories) and the "Mother" of the whole big group (who embraced us as her children from the first minute), the group was fantastic. It was one of the most meaningful experiences I've had since getting here, and gave me a strong boost with regard to my attitude towards the whole integration problem: it is now clear to me that though it will probably be impossible to get accepted into society on the most superficial level because the differences in looks and culture are too obvious, it is very well possible to integrate into any of the endless subsocieties of this country, be it a dance circle, a university or a "family" in the sense of this camp.

I'm very relieved.